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+---- Thread: [mature] he giveth and he taketh away; chapter five (4th and 3rd place results) (/showthread.php?tid=17610)
he giveth and he taketh away; chapter five (4th and 3rd place results) - a demon - 12-14-2017
<center><div style="background-color: #fff; color: #000; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 12pt; font-family: times; padding: 20px; width: 400px; text-align: justify;"><center><b>B A L T O (4th PLACE)</b></center>
When you emerge from the cave, you are no longer on the island—you are home, tucked safely into the side of the Mountain. The entrance seals itself shut behind you, the rocks and dirt come together seamlessly—the lack of grass is the only sign that it was ever there in the first place—and a light gold shimmers cross the surface once the barrier is complete. Below, Beqanna stretches out before you as far as the eye can see and the sun is only just peeking over the horizon. It’s over, truly over, and you can finally start to find your peace.
“Something for your troubles…”
The voice carries on the wind and though you do not notice it, you shimmer, too. Something changes—though it is not apparent what that change is.</div></center>
You now have the choice between wings, horn(s), or immortality. Wings and horns may be of any type, mythical or non-mythical, but must be tangible. Please specify in your update what type of wings/horns they are if they are not your typical Pegasus wings or Unicorn horn. It will take 1-BQ year for your wings and/or horn to fully grow. Immortality is effective immediately. This trait is genetic.
<center><div style="background-color: #000; color: #fff; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 12pt; font-family: times; padding: 20px; width: 400px; text-align: justify;"><center><b>S L O E N E (3rd PLACE)</b></center>
<i>“Please,”</i> says it, though it does so with your friend’s voice and not its own.
You hesitate.
It grins.
“Worthy,” It says, morphing into the creature from before. It towers over you, its head cocked so that it may peer down at you better. The stench of its rotted breath is sickening. “But not worthy enough.”
“Merciful,” comes another voice, this one softer—kinder.
The angel appears beside the demon, unharmed; he is still every bit of the marvelous white stallion from before, still surrounded by a brilliant golden glow. He tips his head to you, his halo tilting off to the side. “I think this proves my point.”
“No,” the demon hisses, taking a swipe at the angel—who disappears, only to reappear several feet away. “Look at the carnage she caused. This only proves my point and as such, she will be rewarded accordingly.”
“Fair enough,” the angel nods. “There are two left, they’ll be the tie breakers.”
“Tie breakers?” It scoffs, then turns on you with a vengeance. It changes, morphs into something larger and even more grotesque. With a giant, meaty fist, it begins beating you down into the ground. Your bones shatter, your skin splits, your insides turn out and you scream and scream and scream.
You feel everything.
“TIE BREAKERS, FUCKING TIE BREAKERS!”
Its keeping you alive, you know it is—
“YOU. HAD. ONE. JOB. SLOENE!”
You’re nothing but meat, a puddle of meat that it keeps punching away at; the pain is immense, you just want it to end—
The angel steps forwards, sending a jolt of golden lightning your way.
<i>And then you wake up.</i></div></center>
Sloene took the demonic path and placed third.
She may now pick <b>one</b> <i>2-space trait</i> from this list of demonic traits:
Magic Immunity
Hypnotism
Self-Detonation and Reformation
Fire Mimicry.
It will take half a BQ-year to master your trait.
This trait will be genetic.
<center><div style="background-color: #000; color: #fff; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 12pt; font-family: times; padding: 20px; width: 400px; text-align: justify;"><center><b>Z O S M A</b></center>
<i>“Worthy,”</i> it says, drawing you back into that black and starry space. The creature sits upon its throne of constellations with its bony legs crossed. It regards you with its glowing red eyes the way someone might regard their most beloved child. You are so precious—so endeared, so loved by it that it does not want to look away.
You have proven yourself to it and as such, deserve a reward.
“Step forward,” it says, though the voice that comes from its mouth is that of Kangaroo—Kangaroo, the dragon, the demon, that most wretched beast.
You obey.
You are hers now, after all, and she is yours.
You spend an eternity there, learning everything it is you need to know—though you are ageless, timeless. It is heaven and hell, pain and bliss. You are sad to see the day when you finally have to go.
With a wave of its clawed hand, a bright red glow surrounds you.
It sears the flesh from your bones, it turns you into<i> something else.</i>
Something new, something… unnatural.
<i>You wake with a gasp.</i></div></center>
<center><div style="background-color: #fff; color: #000; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 12pt; font-family: times; padding: 20px; width: 400px; text-align: justify;"><center><b>N I K O L I N E</b></center>
He loves you, he hopes you know that.
He shoulders the brunt of your weight when you nearly collapse from your injuries, whispering words of encouragement that he prays you can hear—that kiss? It hadn’t been a fluke, no. It wasn’t some spur of the moment thing. He has been there for years, watching you—looking out for you, trying to keep you safe and now is no different.
He couldn’t touch you before, but now—
He takes you away, away; you spend an eternity with him, laughing, loving, learning everything it is you need to know—but then a day comes when you are both called back and you’re once more back at the cave, still bleeding, still wounded. It’s as if you never left. When you both emerge from the cave, the demon is waiting outside.
It’s a horrible creature that your weary mind struggles to understand and it speaks with the voice of your friend.
It smiles. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost say you wanted to fuck her.”
“Silence,” the angel warns, his eyes narrowing.
“Why don’t you? Oh—“ it snorts, as if it is going to try and hide its laughter, then cackles madly. “Oh, oh my… have you?”
The angel says nothing, though his body visibly tenses. “She proves my point, fair and square—you can give them everything, <i>everything</i>, and then take it away and they will still make the right choice.”
“I suppose we will have to see which one of them reaches us first then, won’t we?” It grins, the corner of its lips stretching unnaturally wide from ear to ear. When it opens its mouth to speak again, the top of its head flips back and it is forced to use its own clawed hands to put it back on right again.
“Silence,” the stallion repeats.
The angel looks at you, longingly, as a soft golden glow begins to surround you and you start to fade. “Remember me?” He asks, though you do not have time to answer.
<i>You wake up.</i></div></center>
NIKOLINE AND ZOSMA:
Your next post must be 600 words (min).
This will determine first and second place.
You both wake up on the Mountain—this may be together or separately, second place decides.
Do with this what you will, be creative and enjoy yourselves.
Edit: Once your post has been posted, DO NOT EDIT IT. Doing so will result in your elimination from this quest and your reward going to the character behind yours.
You are both going to like the results.
RE: he giveth and he taketh away; chapter five (4th and 3rd place results) - Zosma - 12-14-2017
Her stomach drops to her ankles.
With blood staining her lips, she is pulled back.
With pleas of mercy ringing in her ears, she is taken away.
<i>Worthy</i>, it says, that voice that is at once fierce and fine. She’s not sure that is true at all, but she looks anyway because she loves it. Loves her. The thing that regards her from its throne atop the stars does not wear Kangaroo’s face (doesn’t smell like lavender, doesn’t remind her of nights on the sand with the salt breeze stirring their hair). It is bony and massive and so very powerful. But she knows, intrinsically, that it is her. That’s why she is compelled to move forward when it asks, even if her physical instincts protest madly inside of her. That’s why she smiles back at its fiery gaze with the cold blue of her own, the corners crinkling, even.
The monstrous thing that had been her woman regards her with love. It is a terrible love that she can feel will break her and rebuild her. It will rend her ribs apart and burrow deep into the meaty center of her soul. But aren’t the greatest loves made of such pain? She has followed Kangaroo to the ends of the earth, and perhaps the beginnings, too – as the stardust spins around their heads. So what if she falls apart and her atoms join the rest of the universe, building and living in another in the future?
Zosma steps forward onto the blanket of stars and doesn’t look back.
The pale woman spends countless days, months, years, millennia, wrapped up in Kangaroo’s teachings and the wide space around her. It is sometimes hard. Some of the lessons are dark and horrible. She quakes with her newfound knowledge of pain and precision. Her scarred skin is delicately flayed one day and sewn back together. Her body is a chalkboard onto which the most wretched words are writ. But it is also wonderful, too. Because the red-eyed thing puts her back together, everytime. She builds her better, even. She draws pleasure out like building waves upon the shore. And these times, Zosma thinks she will break and she welcomes it. The bright light that explodes behind her hooded gaze is like the birth of a galaxy, raw and real and decimating. She learns to love to destroy if only to make more, feel more.
One time, the thing tells her to stay quiet and wait. She tells her that her baby sister is so close that she can taste her in the air. Z stills the excited breaths stirring in her lungs because she is dead. The little girl had died in a field of poppies, her blood indistinguishable from the bobbing heads of the flowers in the prairie breeze. <i> “Remember, Cecilia?”</i> <b>“I remember,”</b> she tells the red-eyed thing. Because she does. She remembers, with tears hot and staining her cheeks, how He had ran her down. She remembers how he had struck her, over and over and over until she was like pulp. <i><b>“Good. Never forget the rage. Never forget the pain.”</b></i> It is the hardest lesson. She sees an apparition of the filly (and whether or not it’s actually her or conjured by the demon, she doesn’t know or care) and she remembers. And vows never to forget.
Time is endless and meaningless, but it passes until she has to go.
Zosma doesn’t want to. <b>“Please,”</b> she echoes the angel. But Kangaroo doesn’t hear or heed. She waves her clawed hand like she is nothing, like their time together is now over and she is being dismissed. But the pale woman feels it, too. She is ready, as painful as it is (as its been). A harsh red glow starts and it feels like the embodiment of her love; she lingers in it. Until it doesn’t. The pain pulls her apart and she finally breaks. This time, there is nothing pleasurable about it. The flesh pulls from her bones and she screams. It changes her, strips her, makes her <i>more</i>.
She wakes with spent breath between her lips.
She is alone on the Mountain. So very alone. So very <i>different</i>.
The stars feel so far away.
RE: he giveth and he taketh away; chapter five (4th and 3rd place results) - Nikoline - 12-14-2017
<center><style> .nevermadeitasawiseman {background-image:url('https://s8.postimg.org/3ylmahiol/fornikolinetexture.png'); border: 1px solid black; width: 600px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 40px black;} .couldntcutitasapoormanstealin {background-image:url('https://s8.postimg.org/6retum679/fornikoline.png'); width: 600px; height: 400px;} .tiredoflivinlikeablindman {margin-top: -110px; color: #c8dace; text-shadow: -1px -1px black, -1px -1px black; letter-spacing: -1px; font-family georgia, serif; font-size: 1.2em; font-style: italic;} .imsickofsightwithoutasenseoffeelin {width: 520px; padding: 20px; background-color: rgba(147, 154, 130, 0.8); border: 1px solid black; border-bottom: 0px; font-family: times, serif; font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 1.2em; text-align: justify; box-shadow: 0px 0px 10px black inset; color: black;} </style><div class="nevermadeitasawiseman"><div class="couldntcutitasapoormanstealin"></div><div class="tiredoflivinlikeablindman">Amidst the mists and coldest frosts
he thrusts his fists against the posts
and still insists he sees the ghosts</div><div class="imsickofsightwithoutasenseoffeelin">She has been neglected from the womb. Her life had been a darkness that surrounded her like a cloak. She had ventured long enough to meet a few faces, to remember a few names but only to have her name remembered by even fewer. Nikoline, pretty Nikoline, was nothing more than a small fragment of glass that wedges in the tender part between your fingers before a tweezer simply plucked her away.
But in HIS eyes...in HIS eyes she is golden and pure. She feels perfect despite the blood that dried on the edges of her open sores, that drug her down to darkness...her head feeling fuzzy and her movements growing sluggish. She feels weightless in HIS eyes and she feels love...so much that she wants to weep and so full of love that she wants to thank the damned devilish creatures for their savagery that brought her to HIM. The pale stallion glows bright and she feels warm, her lips still tingle where he has kissed her and she wants nothing more than to die beneath his gaze...but wait-
Something changes, Her pain is gone, she can only feel HIS warmth. Niko bask in HIS warm glow as a sleepy smile overtakes her lips. HE takes her away from the stink of gore and mold of the cave. She can feel HIM lifting her up to the heavens where things are bathed in a gold light. The dark eyed mare can only see flowers, lush green, and a knoll with an entrance. Niko looks to the angel (she does not ask HIS name but she never feels as though she should...she feels like she has know HIM all of her life). <b>"This place...it's yours?"</b> Her voice is full, her throat no longer sore and tasting of coppery blood. She is healed and whole and happy. <b>"Ours."</b> HIS voice is rich as HE speaks with HIS eyes only for her. Niko can feel the love in HIS gaze. HE adores her, worships her. Niko rushes to him to embrace him to her breast, her lips finding the soft places along the smoothness of his neck and his face as HE whispers the sweet words of devotion to her. Niko has never known such affection.
She has never known a man till the night he takes her beneath the stars, her body offered willingly for the man that she loves.
Their happiness lasts nearly forever, they eat, sleep, dream together. They drink sweet honeyed milk and make love in the tall sea grasses as the birds above serenade them. This is the perfect life. This is everything and more she could have ever wanted. The angelic stallion's devotion never wavers and Niko has sworn her love and body for him alone...until <i>it</i> happens...
Niko has closed her eyes for the last time inside the solitude of that hollowed out knoll next to her angel. She could not have known she would wake up in the cave. Oh the blasted cave with it's cold and pain, she had thought it was all a dream when she opened her eyes shivering and aching all over! The acrid smell of blood -her blood- fills her nostrils and she can feel wetness in her eyes as she searches frantically. Niko thinks she may wet herself in the absolute destitute she is in. What had happened? Where was her angel? How is this happening AGAIN?!
HE is there though and Niko begins to asks a million questions but HE hushes her gently and helps her to the mouth of the cave. Niko winces with each step, the zig-zag of cuts on her legs oozing slowly, but HIS presence encourages her to keep moving. She looks at the glowing angel as the sunlight from the day bites into her dark eyes. The bloodied mare nearly breathes a sigh of relief till the sound of it's voice breaks her concentration. It steals the sunshine and birdsong. It sucks the air from her lungs. Niko can not help but listen as it mocks her, talking in a sinister tongue and using ugly words. Niko whimpers softly but the angel <i>(HER angel)</i> defends her with HIS body and words. Niko presses her muzzle to HIS hip and inhales the scent of lavender and honeysuckle. The ugly black thing fumbles with it's words and it's own damned head but Niko has only eyes for the angelic man. <i>'Remember me?'</i> HE turns with soft eyes and gentle voice. <b>"Always, my love, how could I ever forget you?"</b> Niko returns with love in her eyes and soft smile. Nothing exists anymore in the world but them. The demon creature can not hurt them anymore and if it could, well..the painted woman does not care. She had felt love and happiness and if it is her time to die then so be it as long as she can be with HIM forever. Niko presses her lips to his in a loving kiss and as her eyes close she slips into the soft golden glow that radiates around them.
Nikoline wakes on the mountain...she is confused. Dark eyes look around for HIM. Her heart is breaking already. There is another horse not far off, a pale mare, but it is not HIM. No one could ever compare to HIM. Niko begins to feel her eyes well with hot tears that HE is gone, stolen away. She had sworn her love to HIM. She had sworn her body to HIM. HE was the key to her heart. Why had Beqanna been so cruel to let her love so wholly and take it all away? Niko stands panting softly, her pale mane hanging in her face, ignoring the cremello mare only a moment longer before calling to her. <b>"You! Have you been here long?"</b> Niko intended to ask the woman if she had seen the demon, the cave, HER angel.
Niko would never forget HIM or the love and happiness he had shared with her.
<div style="text-align: center; font-size: 1.2em; color: black; text-shadow: -1px -1px #c8dace, -1px -1px #c8dace; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: -1px; font-family: georgia, serif; margin-top: 20px;">nikoline</div><div style="text-align: center; font-style: italic;">barret x syntyche</div></div></div></center>